My experience is much different.

I started playing with Linux when it was first uploaded to AOL in late 92', early 93' and I've kept my hand in since then. But I'm not a technical person and never used it as my daily driver.

A couple of years ago the XP install on my very, very old Dell laptop needed to be refreshed, but given the age of the machine and what I wanted from it, I decided to put Ubuntu 10.04 on instead.

I have never looked back. It lets me do what I most need to do - read and write email, work within a web-based content management system, resize and clean up photos, use Twitter - with no fuss, no muss. Oo handles my office needs, and lets me share files with my work with no issues at all. My seven year old (!!) laptop runs fast enough, the software is new enough and I don't have to do anything special to make it work. I never drop to the command line. I never get cryptic error messages. It's arguably the simplest computing experience I've ever had. It gets out of my way better than Windows 7 or the increasingly baroque OS X.

Obviously, I don't use Word or Photoshop or any of the other deal breakers. But I can't believe I'm alone in my computing needs, or in how Linux handles them.

The Fox is a separate channel, licensed as a low power. We'll keep it going after the switch, and we hope for full power status someday. The reason why we're also running it as 7.2 now is to try to get out further than the lp analog signal allows.

My point about the four or five channels stands: one channel you cite is running a weather program, where the on-screen elements don't change that much, and I'm guessing the PBS runs all four channels standard def at least part of the time.

The only reason I mention it is because hi-def destroyed the economics of the conversion for small, and even medium, stations. We're back to offering essentially what we've always had, after spending a few million to get there.

BTW, this is a personal opinion: in general, I think my company would like the switch now rather than later so we can shut off the analog and save some money.

As for old folks, skill levels vary, but I can tell you the folks I've dealt with aren't trying to duck this or have somebody wave a wand and make it happen - they often have the boxes, but no one to help them do basic things like undo coax connections and such, let alone sort out which wires go where.

I'm just saying I think it's the height of arrogance to say to tell a bunch of people, 'Screw you. We gave you warning and the train's leaving now.'

As an industry, we didn't get real serious about the warning part until a few months ago, and until the soft tests, I think no one really grasped how big an issue antennas may be.

s.

I agree that "spectrum is a public good," and that digital is somewhat more efficient - in terms of bandwidth - than analog.

But I disagree with a bunch of other points: I work in a small tv station in upstate New York, and have been one of the people handling the phones when we run 'soft tests.'

It is not true that the problems out there now are with "the select group of people who still use VCR's, 8-Tracks, and still haven't bothered to get a converter box" - as a matter of choice.

The population is almost entirely elderly, rural and with no technical skills. These folks rely on us for their entertainment and information, and are utterly lost when it comes to understanding how to hook up a box, or you do after or what you do when it doesn't work.

It's also important to note that these folks didn't ask to be taken on this ride: broadcasters and government pretty much decided among themselves a decade or so back that this was a good thing.

As we're discovering now, even if our signal reaches the places it always has, in order to not fall off the digital cliff some folks will have to buy antennas.

Right now, they may get our analog signal, with fuzz and noise, using rabbit ears. But digital is an all-or-nothing proposition, which means you may need a real antenna on the roof.

Purely selfishly, the original promise of having four or five channels has not and will not pan out. Why? Because hi-def came along after the initial decision, and it eats up massive amounts of bandwidth.

Example: we run our CBS in high def and our Fox in standard, and even then, on Sundays when there is a football game on both stations we can get digital artifacting because there isn't enough bandwidth to fit everything cleanly.

So yes, digital is better, but no, a delay at this point is not just whining or catering to people who are too lazy to get off their duffs,

Scott Atkinson
Watertown NY